Hello again to returning readers and a regular hello to new visitors! This week I felt like sharing some more analog sketches I had scanned out of one of my sketchbooks. I've been using this HJ Canada permanent black sketchbook for a lot of my offline sketching and I really like it. I liked it so much I bought 3 more of them when I saw they were on sale.

These sketchbooks are pretty cheap (imo) costing between $12-15 CAN for the 5x8 inch ones and have 284 blank pages and a stitched spine that allows the book to lay flat. The paper is acid free with one side being more rough and the other smooth. They're fun to sketch in with ballpoint pen and can take watercolour, to an extent (I have suffered some bleed through though haha).

Drawing in this sketchbook has been freeing for me because it is so cheap and innocuous looking, with some nice mid-grade paper, but it can take a beating. My current sketchbook has seen the horrors of having half my water bottle leak on it, and then later on got caught in my bike spokes while they were in motion. I don't feel afraid to draw in this sketchbook and can freely scrawl wonky sketches in it.

These featured sketches were more of a test. Normally I would sketch right to ink using ballpoint or a black Pilot fine-liner. I enjoy sketching or drawing right to ink because it forces me not to overthink what I'm drawing. But recently I've been thinking about how I want to approach texture with my analog inking, so I've started doing a pencil under-sketch and then inking over top with the fine liner.

I still consider these sketches, because I kept my lines loose and rough in order to retain that good illusion of motion a sketch has. Making them too clean can take away from the energy in the under-sketch. From this I let myself have fun losing myself in the texture of the sketches, from Nyx's hair to Sol's wings.

I've been on a long path towards learning to enjoy analogue inking and having this intermediate stage which is still technically low stakes sketching, but also not, has been helping a bit. By doing this I have been discovering what kind of inking style I would like to adopt when using my dip pens, and honestly the style I like is one that has rough and loose line art with lots of texture. I want my inks to look like they are vibrating.

Hopefully once I do more with my dip pen I will scan and show those to y'all tuning in. Otherwise, thanks for stopping by, and have a nice weekend!

Hello for another batch of weekend sketches!

This weekend I wanted to feature yet another Closed Species ARPG I got into over the pandemic called PlushPets, which is run by Basketworm. I really love the aesthetic of this group as well as how low stakes it feels compared to some of the other ARPGs I'm a part of, which is saying something since those groups are also pretty chill.

The game play in PlushPets is simplistic and breezy with the freedom of character design being similarly so. You can pretty much design your character to look however you want with only small specific caveats.

After doing a few general art pieces to collect the in game currency, I built my first character who I named Starfall. I wish I had more to say beyond this but after creating my first character I fell off of playing the game. I would like to go back though. I definitely have been missing the easygoing nature of ARPGs.

I had even been thinking of building my own but... well I will talk on that more later.

Thanks for stopping by!

Hello everyone! It's been a bit of a stretch between weekend sketches, eh? If you've read my previous blog post you'll know I've been on a bit of a journey with my relationship to art. This does extend a bit into my feelings about sharing it, but I will need some more time to ferment my thoughts on that.

Otherwise, I've gotten back into thinking about Sol, Nyx, and their story that currently only plays to the exclusive screen in my head. Though that might change by next year.

I wanted to share some art I had been hoarding of them. Well, not necessarily hoarding since most of these can be found on my Pillowfort account. But if you're someone like my mom and don't go there then this is for you! I figure, since it's the spooky month why not share what I had that fits the season, like cool wereforms and glimpses into some more of Sol and Nyx's demon hunting?

I'm definitely trying to keep the indulgence levels stable with these two, even though I'm on the edge of turning their story into something I will be sharing outside of myself and a handful of close friends, and Sol's Divine Beast Form is the threshold. I love designing super-powered forms (or their "Final Forms" if you like) of my characters. This is definitely a holdover from playing a bunch of JRPGs in my teens; stuff like Final Fantasy 10-X and 12 and Tales of Symphonia. But it's always, or at least very often, the villains in those games that get that cool final form. And not that villains aren't cool in and of themselves, I just like the idea of my protagonist getting a rad burst mode, a beast form, or a divine/ascended self.

Usually in JRPGs the villain's Final Form represents a full corruption of the self, a point of no return where they become truly monstrous and lose all their humanity, which often makes it easier for the player to put the villain down. And I wonder, what does it mean when the protagonist has this form and at some point fully embraces  and enjoys it? Because usually (and I know there are exceptions to this) a protagonist's embrace of their inhuman half is a tentative one filled with doubt. It's a constant struggle for them to keep their humanity despite this other side of themselves.

Anyways, I hope y'all have a nice Halloween. I'll likely be having a good time offline and I hope you can too!